


East of Eden (NSFW)

by eratothemuse



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Comfort/Angst, F/M, NSFW, Smut, Unprotected Sex, Yearning, canon typical mild violence, not safe for work, soft sweet unprotected sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-05
Updated: 2020-05-05
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:00:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24025483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eratothemuse/pseuds/eratothemuse
Summary: It won’t last forever— can’t last for more than right now, but you’re as close to paradise as he’s ever been, and in his line of work, he’s learned to take the blessings where he can get them. You? Well, you never could say no to your Captain, and as for the rules? You were both rebels for a reason. Mutually assured destruction; that’s what this is.
Relationships: Cassian Andor/Original Female Character(s), Cassian Andor/Reader, Cassian Andor/You
Comments: 20
Kudos: 73





	East of Eden (NSFW)

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Uh, there are no excuses for this. Cassian Andor just gives me a deep ache right in the center of my chest— and I love him so much. I hope y’all like this, I know there’s a severe drought of Cassian content on this site, so I had to do my part to remedy that.

##  _**East of Eden** _

Gif source: [Here](https://megmeg-chan.tumblr.com/post/611990844207185920/frodo-sam-rebellions-are-built-on-hope)

* * *

He was starting to regret wearing the jacket, but shedding it would be an admission of defeat at this point, and his pride probably couldn’t recover if you were to come back and spot him without it. Cassian huffs out, already entirely soaked from the downpour overhead, and sweating with the added layers of fabric mixed with the jungle humidity. He can already hear your, _“I told you so,”_ in his ears.

No way was he shedding the parka.

A shake of his head sends droplets of rain flying, but does little to resolve his overall sodden scalp. He does successfully get the strands of inky hair from his line of sight, however, as he lines up the rifle to peer through its scope. One eye closed, squinting through the rain, he has to strain to see, but it’s still clear enough to get a good picture of you, further past his veil of trees.

Deep in his gut, it sits wrong. He had a bad feeling about this.

The mission was _off_ from the get. The intel was shaky, but the worry that it was even possibly right was enough to send his small team into the jungles of Numidian Prime. Just the two of you; fast, quick. In and out before you could kick up too much attention, and just a small enough group to hide under the guise of simply another band of criminals that frequented the wooded sanctuary this planet was known to provide.

This meet, though, was too far from civilization for his liking. Too remote to not raise his suspicions, and his nerves. Why would a smuggler hide out here, when he could simply stay closer to the many villages which housed more appropriate lodgings? Another shady figure taking shelter for the night wouldn’t raise any red flags on this planet.

Either, this guy was carrying hotter information than he thought, or something else was going on entirely.

Thunder rumbled in the distance, as he saw movement in the trees. Angling his rifle, he has a clean shot on the man who emerges. Finger hovering over the trigger, Cassian waits.

_“And there’s our smuggler,”_ he murmurs quietly to himself, as he watches you exchange words. He could feel the water pooling in his boots, mud soft beneath his knees. _This information better be worth it._

You stood rigid in the way he’d come to recognize as defensive. Over time-filled missions spent studying every aspect of you, in the same sense two people pushed together by duty and circumstance would come to know one another, he had picked up on your mannerisms. That’s what he tells himself, at least, but his acute awareness is also why he notices the shift in your behavior as soon as he does.

The small shift in your stance, the flash of a blaster at your hip, hand pushed back too slow to beat the draw of the man across from you. The smuggler had his gun trained on you, primed for the trigger, but the jump he has on you doesn’t matter.

High pitched and ringing, blaster fire echoes through the trees. One shot to the head, and Cassian leans back from the sight with a shaky breath, his blaster smoking near the muzzle.

A glance over your shoulder in the general direction of his shot is all the time you take before you kneel to pilfer through the smuggler’s pockets with deft hands. He watches a curse form on your lips, drowned by the sound of thunder and distance, before you dart between the trees and away from the dead man you’ll leave in the middle of the jungle. Weaving, careful to not lead anyone who could be following to his spot, you come up on him with a rustle of branches and the crack of leaves.

“What happened out there?” he asks first, not waiting for your breath to catch from your sprint, but you reach for the arm of his parka, grasping a handful of the ridged fabric, and tug. Urging him to _move_ before you even so much as utter a word.

He sees why when the black uniforms glint in the distance, hidden under the cover of night and the storm overhead, your voice barely loud enough to catch his ears over it, _“It’s a trap!”_

He feels a curse burning his tongue, but he bites it back. All he can think, chasing your pace through the trees as you run from the troopers, is how he should have protested the mission harder. With more ferocity. How this was all his fault, but with the adrenaline rushing through his veins, it doesn’t even matter past the implications of what he would do _now_ to get out of this mess. Blaster fire hits as you weave through the jungle ahead of him, sharp to his ears as it hits nearby trees, but it becomes clear they weren’t certain exactly where you were, the further you get and the increasingly strayed their fire becomes.

Cassian reaches for you, grabbing by the back of your shirt, and nearly slipping you down on the wet mud beneath your feet as he hisses, “Over here.”

He pulls you close, then down in the shift of the terrain, slightly depressed with the swamp lands nearby. Hidden by rocks and the roar of the rain, you wait, trying to catch your breath as quietly as you can in the midst of the enemy’s pursuit. No matter how hard you strain to hear, you can’t hear the sound of an approach over the roar of the storm, but the upside is that the stealth troopers have probably lost you in it, as much as you’ve lost them.

You push at his side, grabbing his attention with the point of your finger, and the formation of a word, silent on your lips. _Look._

Cassian nods, and the two of you make your way towards the small alcove you’ve discovered. Moss hangs over the top of it, somewhat concealing the entrance from the more elevated high ground. Had he not pulled you both down into the creek, you would have missed it.

You were betting on the troopers missing it, too.

It feels good, to at least get out of the rain, but you only relax when you’re deep enough inside that the storm sounds almost distant. Splattering against the brush and rocks, while you grasp your blaster near your side.

A breath passes your lips, sigh escaping in the little victory, “I think we lost ‘em, Captain.”

Dark eyes slip your way, shooting you that look he always got. Battle-hardened and wary, a wordless warning in them. _Don’t drop your guard,_ they seem to tell you.

“What happened out there?” he doesn’t need to speak as loud with the canopy of stone, but his voice still comes muffled as he brushes the water from his face, “What did he say?”

“All the wrong things,” you strip your gloves, slapping them wet against the stone floor. “Kept asking me if I was alone. Then, his story wasn’t adding up, and when I questioned him on it, he drew his piece. Guess he figured the ruse was over.” You dig into your back pocket, tugging a rectangular sliver of metal from it, “Had this chip on him, though. Orders, is my guess.”

“Give it here,” Cassian gestures you closer, before you hand the technology over. He drops his backpack onto the ground with a heavy thunk, before rummaging through it until he finds the chip reader he was looking for. You do your best to wring out your hair, attempting to get somewhat dry, as you glance towards the cave’s entrance. This time, Cassian does curse, _“Shit.”_

“What’s on it?” when you look back to him, his brows are furrowed, eyes darting along the holographic text quickly as he scrolls through the message.

“Orders to pose as our smuggler, then take the rebels— us— captive, and confirm the location of a suspected base on Akiva,” Cassian grits through his teeth, before powering down the reader and pushing it back into his bag.

“Akiva?” your voice hitches, brows shooting up to your hairline with your surprise, “So it’s true, they were closing in on a base, but how do they even know about _Akiva_?”

“It’s clear they don’t know where exactly on Akiva it is, but they know it’s somewhere. It’s only a matter of time before they find it,” he glances to you in the shadows of the cave. “We need to get this message back to the alliance. Warn them to scatter the camp.”

“The extraction point’s a day’s hike from here,” you remind, before adding, “and that’s without the storm.”

He sighs, knowing you’re right, but it’s clear from the brush of his fingers along his jaw that he doesn’t like it, “We’ll never make it in this weather. Alright, we stay here for the night. When it clears, first thing, we go.”

“Look at the bright side,” you move across the cave, dumping your bag alongside his with a humored smile, “at least we don’t have to worry about Kay leaving without us.”

Cassian all but rolls his eyes at you, yet a small quirk comes to his lips at the mention of the droid. No matter how long it took, he’s certain K-2SO would not leave without him.

As you make your way further towards the cave’s entrance, he calls after you in that Festian accent you’ve come so accustomed to hearing, “And you? Where are you going?”

“To secure the entrance, if we’re to be spending the night here,” cheeky, that’s what you were, as you shoot back to him, “or would you like the honor?”

“No,” Cassian smirks, digging into his bag for the materials to start a fire, “you know what you’re doing.”

“Of course I do; I had a good teacher,” echos off the walls as he leans back on his haunches, watching you disappear behind the edge of the rocks. The words shouldn’t warm him like they do, but the compliment has an effect on him all the same, despite how well he was at hiding it.

It was more than that, definitively, and Cassian knew it. You were always a fighter. Smart, intuitive, could keep your head even in the roaring heat of a mission falling apart around you. Had to be, in this galaxy, where war raged even where there should be none. The espionage came long after you found yourself to be a good rebel soldier, but you had never been wet behind the ears, even when you were presented to him for your first mission on his team.

No, your eyes had been heavy, even then. Masked behind a sense of humor and a snark wit that could repel even the most inquisitive among you. Him, though? He was too observant for the weight of your experiences to slip past him. He had seen it drown too many good men in his own time, and, if he were being honest, every day was a fight to keep himself above water. He had thought it would take you soon enough, too. Break you down until he was forced to put in a reassignment request on your behalf, because his line of work wasn’t for every rebel in the alliance, but you continued to surprise him.

Looking back, he figures perhaps you learned more from him than the bare-bone skills he had tried to impart. Maybe you had learned what couldn’t be taught.

Whatever knowledge he had given you, was only seconded to the byproduct of the torn remnants of your childhood, all at the hands of the Galactic Empire. He had made you quiet, subtle, deceptive, but the Empire had made you deadly, long before you’d ever met the man you called _Captain_.

In truth, he hadn’t wanted to take you on, at the start of it. Cassian much preferred to work alone, to continue to keep the sole ally at his side a reprogrammable droid with which he could control all— okay, _most_ — variables. But he saw a piece of himself in you, which only served to make you all the more dangerous.

You interrupt his thoughts, as he sparks a striker against the stone, “Think that’s a good idea?”

“We’re too far in for the glow to show from the outside,” he looks up to you, fiery glow catching along the shadow of his jaw, “unless you have a better way to dry our clothes before tomorrow?”

You sigh, unstrapping the leather belts securing your holsters and gear to your form, dropping them in a wet heap beside your bags. You pull the thin bedroll from your bag, setting it out by the embering fire as he pulls off his boots, dumping water from them with a grimace.

“And the entrance?” Cassian prompts. Thorough.

“Motion sensors up,” a wave of your hand shows where you’ve placed the alarm box, blinking along the edge of the bedroll, “we’ll know they’re here before they do.”

“Good,” he sighs, moving to sit on the roll before your hand darting out, pressing into his chest, stops him.

“Woah, woah,” you blink, “what do you think you’re doing?”

“Sitting down,” he sounds out, frowning in his confusion.

“Not in those wet clothes, you’re not. That roll is dry, and you’re not about to get it wet.”

“I’m sorry, did we both not just come out of the same storm?” Cassian looks down to your soaked clothes, hands finding his hips, “Your clothes are just as wet.”

“Yeah,” you scoff, “exactly.”

He was about to say something witty. Call you out on the fallacy in the logic of laying a bedroll out and refusing to lie on it, up until you snap him into silence. Cassian is not left wordless often, but when you reach down and tug your shirt over your head, he’s effectively mute.

The slight widening of his eyes, minute and easily missable, is the only reaction he gives, as you lay the fabric along the stone beside the fire. Like you weren’t stripping down to your underclothes before his very eyes.

Deep down, he knows there’s about as much privacy in the rebel barracks, but still. And maybe it’s because it’s _you_ that he feels the need to avert his eyes, glare into the fire as his hands clench into fists at his sides, but he wouldn’t accept that.

“Come on, Andor,” you call, but he doesn’t stop glaring at the fire, not even when you jest, “I know you must’ve nearly sweat to death in that parka. Don’t stay soaked just to prove me wrong.”

He swallows, but his saliva feels thick going down his throat, and when you walk up to him he’s unable to keep from noticing that you’ve shed your trousers now, too. Crouching by the fire, you hold your hands out to it, closing your eyes as the warmth soaks into your bones, drying the rain on your skin.

“Fest is cold, isn’t it?” you jolt him from his avoidance of looking at you with your question.

_“What?”_

“Fest— it’s all mountains, right? Cold weather and snow?” you nod to him, “You must be burning up here, wearing a parka in a tropical rainforest by a fire.”

With a huff, he rips the thing from his shoulders, tossing it where your clothes lie, dripping from his hair, “There? Are you done?”

“Oh, I’ll never be, when you’re so fun to poke fun at, Captain Andor,” baring your teeth in your grin, he knows he shouldn’t do this. Shouldn’t toe the line the way he was, but his whole life has consisted of calculated risks, so what’s one more?

A deep breath, as he looks away, up to the cave’s ceiling, before back to you with a small, unreadable smile, “Fine.” He tugs his shirt off by the shoulders, up over his head while it sticks to the lines of his torso, clinging with how sopping wet he was. He wrings it out, water splattering on the stone, before laying it beside the rest of your clothes. His gear goes next, and the belt of his trousers, before they, too, are set with the rest.

You catch small glances, out of the corner of your eye, until he turns to come and sit beside you on the bedroll. Drying himself by the fire in the same way you were.

Dragging your knees to your chest, you hug yourself, before daring to take a head-on look at him, “Mission’s always a little harder than you first think, right?”

Cassian doesn’t look at you, instead keeps his focus on the flames before him. Firelight dancing on the tan skin of his face, chest, arms— shadows jumping along sharp cheekbones and narrow hips with each flicker of the wind. Dark hair flat to his head with how it’s pushed back in its sleek sogginess, he’s disheveled, but put together. Controlled, so much so that you think he might snap at any moment, because his muscles are tight and it’s clear he’s making an effort not to slip his eyes your way.

You feel your heart clench in your chest. _Oh, this is bad._

The air shifts, becomes thinner. Harder to catch in the caverns of your lungs, leaving you lightheaded as your breath quickens. You really hadn’t thought this through in your urgency to get the disgustingly soggy feeling of your clothes from your skin. Having to tear your eyes away from him, you debate if it was really worth your sanity, to stay dry for the next few hours.

He decides for the both of you, voice casual, but dipped in a lower timbre, “We should get some rest while we can.”

“Right,” you agree too quickly, shifting from your spot to lie down on the pallet with too much haste. Turning away from him as you try desperately not to focus on his presence behind you, forcing out a strained, “Night.”

You hear the rustle as he lies down on the roll, after a stagnant pause. The brush of his skin, light against your back— accidental, because he retreats. Compacting both of yourselves as well as can be on the small fabric bed meant for one. He’s radiating warmth, and the sheer fact of his presence there is enough to leave you sleepless.

Staring at the darkness, seeping from deeper within the cavern, you’re wide awake.

Listening to your shallow breathing, staring at the ceiling, so is he.

Five minutes pass like five years, but Cassian’s fingers intertwine along his abdomen as his eyes slip to the side, head rolling minutely to focus on you beside him. The curve of your hips, the slip of your skin— it doesn’t help when a lingering droplet of water runs from your hair, down the side of your neck, before melting into the cloth to leave a dark imprint there.

When you move gently, slowly turning onto your back, eyes meeting his, he knows he’s caught. Worse, he doesn’t care.

“I never thanked you,” comes from your lips in an intimate softness, before your tongue darts out, absentmindedly wetting them.

Cassian’s captured, eyes dark and trailing the movement, as he asks, “For what?”

Hands pressed beneath your head, cushioning it, you answer like it’s obvious, “Shooting him. Saving me.”

His brow raises, “It’s not the first time.”

“Yeah, and I shoulda’ thanked you those times, too,” a pause, before, “I guess, when your life’s always in danger, you kind of get numb to it. So, I’m saying, ‘Thank you.’”

“Where’s all this coming from?” his smile is awkward, crooked and flustered, as he turns his head to glare back to the rocky ceiling, “You don’t have to thank me for doing my job, you know.”

It’s quiet, aside from the patter of the rain, and the crackle of the fire. When he drags his gaze back to look at you, now, it’s hard to ignore the pull in his gut, or the spark of something, deep in your eyes.

“I know,” you’re inarticulate, but in your own defense, you can barely think with the way he’s looking at you— intense, like he can see right through you. Repeating pathetically, “but, still.” There’s a need there, a _want_ , in the dilated yearning of his eyes. Something you’ve only glimpsed in rare moments, when he lets his guard down just enough for the truth of it to emerge, in a privacy witnessed only by you. At the end of times you’ve caught him staring, or softer moments of shared solitude— those were the only times he’s shown it, and you’re certain he thinks himself so stoic that you haven’t seen it. You doubt he thinks you know, because you’ve never quite let on, but you do. You see it, as plain as you ever have.

It’s the same need you feel within yourself, churning your insides and making your stomach flip. A hammering of your heart in your ears that creates such a terrifying _chaos_ inside you that has you worried you might slip up. May give away just how much you’ve come to want him, after all this time.

But it’s plain as day, in the way your gaze slips down the contour of his nose to focus on his lips, lined with stubble, in need of a shave since the moment you met him. Even if he didn’t make it his business to notice things, he would have noticed it, considering your eyes meet his once more, and he sees the same ache felt deep in his chest, reflected back at him.

You break the silence, a whisper under the weight of the air around you, suffocating your exhale, “We should… go to sleep.”

He _knows_ it’s a bad idea, but he’s had enough time to talk himself into it, over more nights than tonight. Convincing himself of the lies he’s so accustomed to weaving is easier than he’s comfortable with, but he’s rarely comfortable as it is. You’re both adults, who can walk away from this, _surely_. You can go on living as if there wasn’t something electric, terrifying, _invigorating_ sparking between you with every breath you breathe. Each mission together, leaving him feeling like he’d just traversed a minefield. That, _maybe_ , if he acted on it, he could get it out of his system, and he wouldn’t be so clouded with the thoughts of you— all-consuming his mind. Effectively, wiping every intelligent thought from his head. _Right?_

He’s such a good liar, but it doesn’t even sound true to him.

Before he knows it, he’s reaching out, calloused fingertips brushing along the tender curve of your upper arm, the agreement on his tongue just another fib, because _what’s one more little white lie?_

“Yeah, we probably should.”

He’s already in agony, so what’s a little fire? If he’s going to burn, _then burn._

You’re practically vibrating under his fingertips, the small touch sending every nerve on red alert. Hyperaware of him; aching for more than the rough pads of his fingerprints against your skin.

He confesses the closest thing to the truth that he can manage, low, breathless on his tongue and so fast that you almost think you’re mishearing him, “I want to kiss you.” You know you haven’t, when he follows it up with, “Will you let me?”

As simple as that, your carefully-constructed charade is broken. All the pretenses that were used to keep one another at arms reach, or convince yourselves that there was nothing more than a camaraderie— this deep _friendship_ — brewing beneath the surface, comes crumbling down within the span of two quick breaths. A heartbeat, thick with understanding, passed from his veins to yours.

Cassian’s hand is warm, touch shifting from feather-light to pressing, scooping up the curve of your shoulder to lay his intentions on the side of your neck. You barely have the word past your lips before he’s shifting his hips on the bedroll, angling himself ever closer, as he can already see the answer in your eyes. He knows he won’t be rejected.

_“Yeah—”_ you parrot, but he’s so close it’s a brush against his lips, sharply cut off in the exhale as he takes the final push to slate his mouth against your own, and suddenly you’re breathing him in. Tasting the lingering rainwater on his lips, fresh, and the hint of something sweet on his tongue. You melt beneath the slight hesitancy of his mouth on yours, slow, if only to revel in this secret shared between you.

_Finally_. It echoes in his mind, not in so many words, but the vast relief that washes over him. A resonating tightness in his chest that absolves itself in the single second he presses himself closer to you, and kisses you more fully. Stirring him forward if only to keep that weight from washing over him once again, until, the simple warmth of your skin and the press of your lips back up to him is enough in itself.

You fill his lungs with petrichor as he pushes you back into the roll, fingertips dancing on the curve of your throat, slipping up to catch at the slope of your jaw. His hair is still wet when your fingers grip it, slick, planting yourself along his scalp and the angle of his collarbone in an effort to pull him closer. Kiss him _deeper_. Urge him on in a wordless plea for this moment not to stop.

You’re breathless, and the ease with which he slots himself between your knees does nothing to alleviate the pressure, suffocatingly heavy in your lungs. Stirring something deep inside that you’ve only let yourself feel for him in the small privacies you manage to steal away for yourself when you’re between missions on Yavin 4. An arousal so smothered, it almost shocks you with the ferocity in which it rears its head, now. Fierce and demanding as it churns your stomach, settling warm in your core with just the simple closeness his body lays upon you.

Cassian shivers, and whether it’s from the chill of the water drying along his skin, or the drag of your blunt nails down the back of his head, you’re unsure. It radiates into you, setting you on edge, humming with the sensitivity of your singular awareness, focusing on his presence caging you in. A shift of your hips has your leg curling up the side of his thigh, the boost of your calf bringing his pelvis forward to grind down into your own. Reactive, instinctual, he rolls himself against you, blazing a delightful friction between your thighs, restrained only by the thin underclothes still clinging to your skin. It’s all it takes to ignite a ripple of arousal there, the striker to your match.

A whimper along your lips has him leaning back, and he hates himself when he whispers the small shred of sense he has left, blinking down at you, “We shouldn’t do this.”

If he tried, he knows he can make himself roll off of you right now, even if that meant having to settle the hard-on that was growing between his thighs. It’s the right thing to do— what he should do, if he cared at all about the two slightly more broken people you would be when this was all over, but he leaves it up to you, because, _damn him, if he didn’t need you like he needed oxygen right now._ The distraction is almost as tempting as the intimacy he thought he’d effectively conquered his craving for, and now that your hands are on him, he’s barely holding on by the thread of sanity he has left. A single word from you, and he’ll be out of his misery, in one way or another, he’s positive.

But you arch your back, words airy as you tug him back down to you with the drag of your fingers down the length of his back, and all hope is lost, _“You’re right.”_

A rebellious agreement, sealed with the press of his lips to yours, and forged with the blaze of his hands down your sides. This _thing_ between you— this blatant misstep as you fell into a cavernous abyss of your own making, should go no further than this, right here, right now. You both knew it. Worse, you knew _better_.

Tomorrow, you should go back to who you were before he had kissed you, and you had confessed how you’d wanted him to. You had to, not only for the sake of the shaky fraternization policy between superiors and subordinates that the Rebel Alliance rarely upheld, but for the urgent fragility of the status of your friendship. The camaraderie that had kept you both alive, countless times before, couldn’t be compromised by this. Neither of you could afford a clouded judgement, with the assignments he was routinely assigned, and if you couldn’t get past it, he’d be forced to request your reassignment, which was far worse than not having you at all.

Or maybe he was overthinking again, because _Cassian knew better_ , but having you flush against him is as close to paradise as he’s ever known. Taking it for granted was as good as shooting himself in the foot— foolish, almost as much as you were for letting him touch you like this; have you, like this.

His lips, hot against your neck leave a gasp raking up your throat, weighted with desperation and the thin haze of lust that’s dusted over the both of you, “ _Cassian_ —” Not _Captain_ , as he’s become so accustomed to hearing, but _Cassian_. It sounds distant, through the blood rushing in his ears, and your skin is just about all he can focus on. The feeling of you under his hands, surprisingly soft and supple to them, despite the scars evidencing your time with the Alliance, or the marks storying the life you’ve lived even before that. Cassian can remember some of them, but others he’s never seen or noticed.

He’s so enthralled, so lost in his bewonderment of how you got them, that he almost misses how sweetly you call his name entirely. How laced with adoration it comes, falling from your lips— and he’s suspected for a long time you’ve worshipped him in some sort of way, as a superior or a friend, but this confirms more than just that. It pulls on his heart, leaving him lightheaded as he anchors himself with the grasp of his fingertips beneath the fabric of your underclothes. He presses on, for both your sakes, thundering forward with as much tact as he ever used, maneuvering you like this was a mission, and you were his mark. Anything to get the ringing in his ears to stop recalling that tone you’ve said his name in.

_Cassian— Cassian— Cassian—_

Dangerous territory, this is.

He brushes the pads of his index and middle fingers, right up against your clit, refocusing himself on the pleasure twisting your features into a desperate raise of your brows and part of your lips. A sharp inhale meets the curve of your hips as you rock into his touch, while he rolls his fingers in a tight circle, and that really does it. You tug at his hair, pulling his head back and ripping his tongue from where he’s kissed down to the dip of your chest. His name sounds more wrecked this time, and it’s raw enough with your arousal for him to pretend he hadn’t noticed the honeyed reverence that struck so deep in his chest.

He tugs against your grip to get a better look at you, asking softly, “You liked that, did you?” The roll of his fingers picks up, leaving you squirming, barely managing your sharp nod. Hips rocking into his hand, your grip eases only to grant him reprieve to your lips.

If your voice had been revealing, your kiss is even moreso. You’ve wanted this for so long, that the truth of it crumbles against his tongue. Open, as honest as you can make yourself be, in the heat of your eyes fluttering shut and the press of your tongue. He’s no better, for a man whose trade is his secrets. Cassian’s greatest betrayer, the soft groan you drink in, and the drag of fingers as they slip through your folds. A digit, delving within you, if only to test the waters. You’re far more soaked than he’d anticipated, the realization surging his hips, rutting against you to relieve what he can, and momentarily sate what he cannot.

You’re tangled up in him, writhing as he adds a second digit to company his first, the sounds of your wetness meeting the patter of the storm and the soft whimpers passed between you. It’s intimate, with his elbow supporting himself where it presses down into the pallet just above your shoulder, and when you slip your hands down the curve of his sides to the small of his back, pushing beneath the waist of his underclothes, his lips part from yours in his own ravaging inhale. Huffed out against your lips in a gust of air as his thumb flicks along your clit, fingers pushing to the knuckle within you, but his focus is broken.

He’s distracted. Distracted by the tug of the fabric on his hips, as you shift them down, just enough to reveal the curve of his ass. You’re gripping, to pull his hips up to yours in an incoherent neediness that’s unconcerned with the obstacle of his hand in your path. You want him. _You want him._

That’s all you can manage to think, and you nearly say it, “Cassian— I’ve needed you for—” _so long_ , but the slight shake to his head stops you, and the words on his tongue kills the thought spilling from yours.

“Don’t say— you can’t say these things,” he curls his fingers within you, drawing his slow torture, but his voice is what makes your heart race. Accent thick with arousal, but tortured in his own right. It’s his eyes, though, filled with a hopeless plea, as if he were the one begging for mercy, that steals your breath.

_Why?_

It’s plain on your face, the confusion swirling with the pleasure, as his fingers slip from within you, leaving you rocking weakly up to nothing, until he replaces them with the drag of his cock. Pressing through your folds, head hitting up against your clit only to rock back down to your entrance. His own pleasure furrowing his brow, but you watch him, waiting, until he can no longer keep the breathless confession from clawing its way up his throat.

Soft, guilty almost, he lays a small truth before you, “I don’t think I will be able to forget them.”

A shake of your head, when soft fingertips meet his jaw, and the stubble scattered there. Too gentle for the roll of his hips to yours to mean nothing, like it was supposed to.

“Don’t forget,” you murmur, lifting to brush your nose to his, lips ghosting along yours as you tempt his weight back down to you, all-encompassing as it once was, “I won’t.”

Pushing it down would be so much easier, but he knows every second of this will be etched in his mind forever. Maybe, just this once, he can take something, just for him. Even if you, like this, are destined to only live in a memory.

He wrestles with it, you can see it clearly, as his breathing stutters and his grind nearly comes to a halt, ticking like a time-bomb as he works through it. Keeping you at arm’s-length through this wasn’t working, each obstacle leaving him with another shaky compromise to the rules he’d constructed of this interaction between you.

You want to say something, anything to convince him to pick up his pace again, but you’re more terrified you’ll ruin this shaky circumstance entirely with a single word. So you sit there, and press your lips tentatively against the side of his mouth, if only to try and break whatever cog that was sticking loose in his head, before leaning back just enough to catch the conflict in his eyes once again.

Tongue wetting your lips, you muster the courage to take the chance, and murmur, “All we have right now, is this moment.”

Cassian snaps back into it, with the closing of the distance parting his lips from yours. A feverish press as he grips at the curve of your thigh, lifting your hips to meet his, whatever resolution he needed seemingly found. In the midst of his decision, he solidifies it, pressing thick into you with a slow pace. Tensing up with a squeak, he relents for you, only to press further as you arch your hips to urge him deeper. Starting and stopping, working his way in with the same straightforward determination you’d seen him incorporate in more complex things than this, yet this ruins you, far worse than anything he’s done before.

It’s heartbreakingly wretched, how the ache in his chest seems to swell with each moan and whimper he earns from you in the cavernous solitude you’ve found for yourselves on this backwater planet. He wants nothing more than to take you apart, even if it means leaving you as broken as he was by the time he was through. If he was drowning, he was going to drag you down with him, with all the same burning he felt, raging within his soul. After all, you had asked for it, hadn’t you? For something to remember, even if it ends up haunting him for whatever was left of his life?

You may as well have, because when he starts fucking you in earnest, when his hips come flush to yours and the curve of his cock hits you in the depths of your core, he knows this will haunt him. Dragging delicious friction through your walls, clenching tight with a velvet heat against him— it’s so perfect, that he almost loses himself entirely in the feeling, and with every punctuated piston of his hips, it’s dangerously closer to making love, than either of you can dare to admit.

Drowning, in more ways than one, you’re lost in the sea of his pleasure. Losing your breath on the chap of his lips, the clank of teeth as he kisses you harshly, desperately. Whatever moans you make are muffled by his tongue, and your lips, as you kiss him back with just as much fervor.

He splits you open, again and again, until each thrust sends a sharp burst of electricity up your spine, culminating in an oceanic roar of pleasure, threatening to drag you under when the bough breaks.

His hair is starting to dry, as you card your fingers through his stringy locks once more, gripping and pulling him away, while at the same time needing him closer still. His arm, planted above your shoulder, tucks beneath your head, holding you close as he buries his lips into the column of your throat. Licking a stripe up the feverish skin, baring teeth as he drags them along your neck, certain to leave a mark if his abuse continues much longer, but it’s better than the words that threaten to spill should his mouth be left unattended.

In the throes of this passion, too many truths were unfathomably loose on his tongue.

Yours, however, devolve into soft mewls, and outright pleas of his name. Confessions, in their own right, with the raw candor that comes in moments like these. This time, he doesn’t ask you to stop, and he’s too weak to ignore them again.

“C-Cassian— Yes, just like that— I want you— I want you— Give it to me, please! All you have, I want it— I— I—”

Your breath hitches, and he feels it. The erratic clenching of your walls around him, building up, as you shake beneath him. It’s excruciatingly wonderful, spreading through your abdomen in a liquid heat that burns up your spine, singes every nerve in its path until it wrings everything you have to give from your limbs, curling your toes and tightening your grip on him in every way you can manage. Clenching tight around him, in the height of your climax, as you choke out a portion of his name in such a miserably wrecked sound and hold him tight— so tight he actually lets himself overtly think how _he doesn’t want you to let him go_ , if he’s able to think at all with the groan that rips, sheer pleasure whimpered from his throat.

Hoarse on his tongue and foreign to your ears, his own orgasm claims him, right at the tail end of yours, as your walls flutter and milk him for all he has left. Some Festian phrase falls from his lips, and you don’t catch enough of it to properly recall the words he’s used, with the dull pounding of your own heartbeat overpowering in your ears. It’s almost like he doesn’t realize he’s said it, as he pants his comedown into the side of your neck, beneath the shell of your ear. Barely held up by a shaky arm and the press of his knees into the thin bedroll separating the two of you from the cave floor, you’re either too curious or too foolish to leave him with it.

“What?” you ask dumbly, too dazed from your senses to even think twice about questioning him on it. The sound he makes is a low hum, inquisitive, like he doesn’t understand what you’ve said, as his breathing slows gradually. Slowly, you probe again, dragging your hand down his shoulder to the spanse of his back as you shift your hips ever so slightly, feeling him twitch within you, “You said— something. What’s it mean?”

He leans back at that, and you finally get a good look at his face. Bewilderment, as if he didn’t quite realize he had said it, at least not _really_. Not _out loud_. It’s gone, as soon as you realize it, though, and you doubt you would have seen it at all had he not been in the direct aftermath of the mind-numbing release that had just wracked through the both of you. Off-guard, for once in his life.

“It’s nothing,” is his answer, and just like that, he’s closed off again. Slipping himself from within you and you have to bite your bottom lip to keep from whimpering at the empty feeling, oversensitive enough as he pushes himself off of you, to lay back on the roll. Staring at the ceiling, he waits, but you know he must feel the pressure of your gaze upon him.

It’s all you’re going to get for an explanation, you realize, and curse yourself for not having paid more attention to the particular syllables that had fallen from his lips. You could have figured it out yourself, if you had only listened.

A sigh passes your lips, as you right your underclothes, accepting, “Okay.” It stung, how quickly he had unraveled himself of you, but the inking hurt of his retreat had only clouded you from spotting the acute panic behind the carefully-constructed mask of his eyes. As the silence drags, it’s far worse than if he had said anything at all. Worried the jaded wound of his behavior would reflect too obviously in your eyes, you turn your back to him on the pallet, managing an awkward, “Night.”

When he says your name, it’s so quiet you have to strain to hear, but he repeats it, and you feel the shift of his weight before the warmth of his skin radiates against your own. Along your back, his hand smooths, apologetic in his tone, but equally as cautious, as he turns you slowly back to face him.

“It’s—” he halts, appearing frustrated by the lack of his own eloquence, until he tries again with a sigh, “This can’t leave this place.”

“I’m not going to be the one advertising it, if that’s what you’re worried about,” you huff back at him with a defensive edge.

“That’s not what I am saying,” Cassian sighs, running his hand down the side of his jaw as he pieces together his words more carefully this time. “It would make things more… complicated if we were to get involved. When we leave, it can’t follow us, do you understand? When we leave, that’s the end of it.” There’s a sort of conviction in his voice that his eyes don’t share, far more wary than the assuredness of his tone would assert. He was watching you, looking for a reaction in the reflection of your eyes, peering over your shoulder to catch sight of him.

You turn slightly, ever so more back towards him, until you’ve settled back down onto the pallet, understanding smoothing your furrowed brow, “I know.” You had since the beginning, so he needn’t worry, at least, not about this. It was an understanding you both shared, that this was all you could ever be. Reaching towards him, you let your fingers brush along his cheekbone, smoothing the hair from where it fell onto the shadows of his face to tuck behind his ear, flattening your palm against the side of his neck, “Don’t worry, I know.”

His hand catches your wrist, but he doesn’t pull you away from him, “Then you know why I have to hear you say it.”

A wry giggle slips past your lips, a roll of your eyes making light of the weight behind his lips on the inside of your palm, “After we leave this cave, we’re friends again.”

“We’re friends now,” he taunts, with a small quirk of his lips.

“Oh? Do you do this with all your friends, Cassian?” you shoot back, if only to see his smile widen, before you ease your lips back to his. Tumbling him down with you, once again.

The morning comes too soon, too early, and you know you’ve not slept long, if only evidenced by the incessant pull of sleep in your eyes, but even that isn’t nearly as irritating as the realization that his arms are no longer around you. No, he’s already dressed, clothes dry, and tossing your own down on the pallet beside you as you wipe the exhaustion from your face.

“We need to get moving,” is all he supplies, before he goes back to collecting your things from around the cave.

You dress in near silence, tugging and lacing your boots up to your ankles, before snatching your pack from the stone ground to make your way to the mouth of the cave, where Cassian plucks the motion sensors from their securements and shoves them into the pocket of your bag. The storm has died to a low drizzle, but the heat is building, even in the early morning. With the fresh rain, it’s sure to be sweltering by the midday.

“Cassian,” you stop him, right before he can step out into the dull rainfall.

A hum at his lips, brow raised is what he levels you with, before you slip up beside him. Dragging your hands up to find your grip in the collar of his parka, sending him tilting down into the arch of your body, up to meet his lips with yours. One last kiss, is all you need.

He’s a bit startled, but he melts against you far easier than he should, catching the curve of your hip under his hand as he kisses you back, just as slowly.

But when you part, you find he looks at you in warning, “Remember—”

“I don’t know about you, but I haven’t left the cave yet,” you smirk up at him, and it’s almost worth the mixture of amusement and reprimand you see in his eyes. You step out into the rain, almost dramatic in your efforts, before turning towards him with a smile that’s equally as heartbreakingly manufactured as your humor, “Now, I’ve left.”

Cassian bites the inside of his cheek, deciding against the words that threaten to spill, before following you out into the rain with, “It is too early for your jokes.”

“I thought you liked my jokes,” you pout, as he takes the lead in moving through the jungle towards the extraction point.

“That’s not the point,” he nods towards the treeline, and the two of you cautiously make your way from the lower creek back the way the troopers came. “Keep your eyes open. They’re probably looking for us, still.”

“It’ll be near sunset before we reach Kay,” you settle a hand at the blaster on your side, “but at least the rain’s died down some.”

The silence that settles gradually is not nearly as horrific as the one the night before. It’s fueled by your vigilance, an awareness of the surroundings, and the ease with which you both slip back into the roles you’d held before the events the night before. Still, in the midst of it, your mind wanders, as much as your eyes do.

To the feel of his hands on your skin, and the way he had been. It’s done nothing to dull the ache in your chest, if only making it seem worse, as you climb over overgrown roots and weave through the underbrush of this wretched planet. Smothering it is easy when he spares his glances back at you, but the poignant silence is evidence enough that neither of you are as good at pretending everything was back to normal as you had thought yourselves to be.

Because if everything was as it were, you would have been talking more. Once the brunt of the danger was over in the earlier moments, as you trekked for hours through the jungle with not a trooper in sight, it had never failed that you opened up. This time, though, it’s one long silence after another, cut up with the bare necessity of speech, until you can barely stand it anymore.

By the time you raise your head, near to confront him about it, his hand is darting out to stop your careless stride, pushing you back within the treeline on the edge of the clearing you’d come upon. Yellows and pinks lit up the evening sky, and you can barely believe that sunset had come so fast.

“It looks fine,” he murmurs, eyeing the edges of the clearing before looking back to you, “what do you think?”

“I don’t see anything, but we haven’t seen a soul, so I’m pretty sure we’re good,” you agree, before glancing towards the U-Wing nested in the brush. “And Kay would have given a signal if he’d been compromised.”

Cassian nods his agreement, and with a motion of his hand, you’re both rushing low towards the ship and across the clearing, remaining vigilant to the treeline, in case you had been wrong about it. For once, the Force seems to be with you, because no blaster fire comes from the treeline, and you come to the bridge of the ship without difficulty.

K-2SO spins in the Captain’s chair to face you as you board, sassy as ever, “It took you two long enough.”

“I missed you, too,” you tap his shoulder before making to grab the railing above your head, finding a good grip for your undoubtedly sudden ascent.

“Get us out of here, Kay,” Cassian begins, looking out the front windows of the cockpit. “You can catch up when we’re airborne.”

“I was not—” K-2SO seems to huff, before turning towards the console, “Alright. You do realize, that extending the timeframe of a mission increases the probability of that mission resulting poorly?”

“ _Kay_ , get us in the air, if you please,” there’s an exasperated warning in his tone, as Cassian takes the seat alongside the droid, and the ship begins to move beneath you. Thrumming low with the beginnings of take-off, you feel a smile quirk your lips as you chuckle at them.

Cassian glances over his shoulder, catching your eye, but his stare lingers. A hint of the man you had seen the night before, simmers in the way he watches you. A beat longer than necessary, just long enough for you to feel the dull throb of your own heart, and for his eyes to flash back to the console almost guiltily.

Your name is on his tongue, as he addresses you without looking upon you, as he’d been proven unable to do even something as simple as that, “Send an encrypted message to the Alliance— let them know about Akiva.”

Your grip on the rail above your head loosens, as you make your way to the back of the ship, “Right away, _Captain_.”

By the time K-2SO is asking, “What’s that about Akiva?” you’re near the back of the ship, drowning out the sound of Cassian’s explanation as you set up the encryption for your message to Rebel Headquarters, but your mind isn’t in it. No, your thoughts are focused at the man in the cockpit, and how he’d managed to break the dam of your resolution to get over him with that simple, small look.

Cassian had been right, you would both be much better off if what had happened in the cave had stayed there, but it hadn’t. That look had been enough to solidify in your mind that he was just as much a victim to it as you were, because nothing was left in that cave. You’d dragged the baggage of your feelings with you through the jungle, and the hint of longing in his eyes was enough to leave your foolish heart soaring at the possibility that maybe, _just maybe_ , it wasn’t as over as it was supposed to be between you and your captain.

As for Cassian, well, he wasn’t very good at fooling himself to begin with.


End file.
